Those Questions

Back to the questions I'm having about meaning:  Over the last decade, as my illnesses developed, I went through a range of emotions, thought patterns, and behavioral states in reaction.  I have much to say about many of those experiences, but at this moment I want to focus on some of my emotions, thoughts, and behaviors during my last year working as a professor.  It was a period of becoming detached from many things, including things I'd strongly believed, places and people, objects, behavioral habits or ways of acting, and patterns of thinking and feeling.  Some very concrete changes took place:  my husband and I first separated and then divorced; I formed relationships with new people and began practicing polyamory (including an open relationship with my now ex-husband);  and entered into what has now become a long-term, co-habitating relationship with a new partner.

I realized that on my own, even with my university salary and my student loans in forbearance, I could no longer manage the expense of the loans associated with the home I was living in (loans that are still in my ex-husband and my names).  I admitted to myself that I could not continue as a professor or full-time worker of any kind, and I began to consider the implications of that for my income and living situation.  I realized I might have my mortgage foreclosed on, and as a result be unable to rent or purchase another place to live for an extended period of time. I realized that it was entirely possible that once I stopped working, I might become homeless or dependent on family and friends for housing and food.  I realized that my mother, who is disabled and mentally ill and who has lived with me for the last five years (and whom I had told I would take care of), might also become homeless as a result of my actions. I realized that I might not be able to provide my son a home in the county where he was attending community college, which would make it difficult for him to continue to be enrolled.  I realized he might have to move in with his father, at a time when he was strongly opposed to this.  And I might have to give up my two dogs and two cats.   And lastly, I realized I might lose my health insurance and access to the medications that were keeping my health from deteriorating at an even faster rate. 

In addition to these concrete changes in living situation, when I stopped working at the university, I faced the loss of my professional career, which involved dramatic changes not only in my daily activities but also my self-image, personal and professional goals, and relationships.  

I stopped teaching close to the end of the spring semester of 2012, and went on short-term medical leave for the fall semester.  I'm now on long term leave and just recently received news that both the company that provides long term leave benefits through my university, and the social security administration consider me disabled.  This status is up for review in three years, which means that the feds think that it's possible that my health might improve over that time period.   

My life is now very different than it was at this time last year; some of the things I feared or anticipated have come to pass, others have not.  I, my mother, and my animals are not homeless, and I do have health insurance.  My son is now living in California with his grandparents, attending college there, and is happy with that change.  I moved across the country from the hustling and bustling suburbs of Washington, D.C. to rural New Mexico.  I live in a rental house with my partner Mike, who moved with me; the house in Maryland is now rented out and managed by my ex-husband. 

I emptied out my campus office, and took about half of all my worldly belongings to the thrift store.  I no longer have Netflix, cable television (my tv is in a box in a closet), a land telephone line, a microwave, a furnace, a clothes dryer, or a connection to the electrical grid or county water or sewage.  My mail comes to a post office about five miles away, not to my front door.  Our nearest neighbor is about half a mile away, down a dirt road that is impassable after a heavy rain or a few inches of snow. 

I no longer teach or mentor students.  I've stopped doing any academic writing or reading, and attending academic conferences.    I no longer serve as the head of an academic program, on academic committees in the university, in professional groups in my area of expertise, or as a adviser to community groups. 

I'm no longer a professor, an academic, a worker, a wife, a mother of a teenager, a homeschooling parent, a suburbanite, a commuter, a homeowner. 

Given all these changes, it isn't surprising I'm wrestling with questions of identity and meaning.


Yesterday, I read an interview with Dr. Evira Aletta.  She said two things I found useful and insightful.  First,

Chronic illness means getting sick and being told it’s not going away, and that stinks. Our bodies have suddenly freaked out on us and we’ve lost control of the one thing we thought we could count on.

Second, 

It’s not depression if you are adjusting to a major loss. That’s grief, which needs time to process. Allow yourself that time to mourn, to be angry and sad about what you’ve lost. You need time to accept the new reality.

 We take the workings of our bodies for granted. Sure, as we age we have aches and pains and perhaps are not quite as capable of the physical kinds of things we used to do with ease during our young adulthood and childhood.  But we still assume, on a day to day basis, that we will have sufficient control over our bodies that they won't interfere with our capacity to carry out our customary roles and activities.  We don't realize the extent to which the wellness of our bodies allows us carry out our commitments to others, live in alignment with our values, and maintain our personal and professional identities.

I think it's a mistake, though, to see the changes that have taken place and the choices I have made as a result of my chronic illnesses solely as losses.  Yes, things have changed for me.  And there have been losses.  I miss relationships I am no longer in, roles I played, places I lived and worked, activities I engaged in.

I also miss the relatively secure attachment I had to certain values and beliefs.  I did question those values and beliefs while I had them, of course, but it was from a different stance and with a different attitude than now.  I was functioning day to day within a given framework, and that framework and my place within it were relatively stable.  And I was incredibly busy and stressed out and coping with pain and illness all at the same time, so I didn't have the leisure or otherwise feel compelled to question things too deeply.  Throughout my adolescence and early adulthood, I had asked fundamental questions about who I was, who I wanted to be, what kind of life I thought was the good life, and so forth.  I came up with some answers, so to speak, and I was busy working trying to align my life with them. 

I wouldn't say there was a sudden dramatic change in activity or thinking for me, perhaps with the exception of the choice to move to New Mexico rather than elsewhere.  Essentially, I was sick and struggled to cope over an extended period of time.  As I became less able to engage in the physically, emotionally, and intellectually exhausting activity that was my life, I began to detach from things as they had been.  Simply, I couldn't go on doing the things I had been doing in the way I had been doing them.  As this was happening, I began to question more deeply my identities, my values, and the nature and values of the relationships and systems in which I was embedded.

I do wonder if there's a kind of sour grapes thing going on in my thinking:  something along the lines of, "I can't do these things any more, so they're not worth doing anyway."  I do think this is true in the sense that the prospect of not being able to do them anymore provided an opportunity and an incentive to question their worth.  [Here, I won't go into the specific things I was doubting or the specific doubts I had about the worth.  Those are topics for later posts.]

Once I accepted that I couldn't go on as I had been, certain things became closed off as possibilities for me; but equally important, other possibilities opened up.  As just one example:  I could no longer afford to live in one of the most expensive housing markets in the U.S. and would no longer have access to the numerous assets in the area, but I did now have the opportunity to explore an entirely new area of the country, make a move to a more rural environment, and become less dependent on grid-based resources such as electricity, water, sewage, and food. 

With the loss of my professional responsibilities, and my identity as an academic and an employed person,  came an enormous freedom: a freedom to reinvent myself and to make use of my time in ways I'd never been able to before.

I don't want to sound Pollyanna-ish here.  This freedom is very bounded.  The same conditions that made the freedom possible also set boundaries that I must live with daily.  For example, even though I now have the time to explore my more artistic side and delve deeply into intellectual interests outside of my discipline, I am physically unable to attend classes, incapable of standing or sitting for hours in museums or concerts, and I can't sell my artistic products at shows.  Travel, which I love, is difficult.  My ability to explore the natural world outside my home, the millions of acres of public land, is limited.  I am very reluctant to make any commitments that involve socializing because I can't predict my fatigue or pain levels.  I'm very limited in my capacity to engage in the community, to be of service to others, and to be physically active in causes I support.  My ability to read and write complex arguments is limited, due to fatigue and the other effects of my chronic illnesses. 

I still love many of the same things I did before I became ill and I'm learning how to do them and access them within these new limits. That learning process is difficult.

More difficult still, however, is the turmoil I've been thrown into with respect to finding meaning and attaching value.  I'm having a hard time seeing why I ought to do or not do anything at all, beyond what my immediate impulse and interest dictate.   I'm not so much questioning how I ought to behave toward others; that's not really a concern right now.  Instead, I'm struggling with how to know what to do from one moment to the next, and how to know what to do on a longer term basis.  I don't know what standard or process to use to decide what actions I ought to take.  For example, I don't know how to determine if, when if I'm feeling fatigued and feel the desire to sleep all day,  I should just do so.   Or how I should respond to my residual feelings of obligation to volunteer in my community.  Or my recurring feelings of obligation to write things that might be of value to others.  Or my inclination to learn more Spanish.   

In many cases, we choose our roles and living circumstances because they align with our values.  Those things then provide us some guidance on how to behave.  I don't know how to behave. 

I'm not done with this entry, but the day is over.  This will have to be enough for now.